Letters to the editor

We Reap What We Sow

Over the last several months I continue to read about the Seeley fire, the devastation and all of the underlying causes from global warming to acid rain.

I believe it's time someone told the truth! The land management agencies charged with management of our forests have not miss-managed the forest, they, in fact have not managed the land at all! To be fair this may be a result of the so called environmentalists who in fact are preservationists and know nothing of forest management but continue to apply pressure on the agencies to not harvest timber.

The notion you can preserve a forest and keep it just as it is today is as absurd as to have a puppy and attempt to keep it as a puppy forever. I suppose with a good taxidermist, it might work on a puppy.

A forest is a living thing. It grows old just like you and I. As it matures and ages it is susceptible to disease, insect attacks and the ravages of time. It can no longer produce viable seed or fight off insects such as pine beetles. It dies and becomes an excellent source of fuel in your fireplace or as we saw this summer, in catastrophic wild fires.

Did you notice the forest fire was contained largely on private land where responsible land owners had harvested their over - mature trees and made an attempt at good management? A forest is a renewable resource similar to corn or cotton. It needs to be managed, harvested, reseeded or replanted and put to productive use. If we do nothing as we have seen over the last several years, mother nature will resolve the problem with wild fires. The land will be set back to the beginning and over time grasses and forbs will grow, followed by shrubs and brush, next the deciduous trees such as aspen and finally after a 100 years or so the forests may return.

I personally don't have a 100 years to wait and to be honest I don't feel it is necessary for any of us to endure this type of gross incompetence for even the next 10 years.

It's time to elect responsible people to government who think with a brain and not listen to the emotional rhetoric from the preservationists who in all honesty are too misinformed or too incompetent to even begin to understand basic biologic facts!